Workforce Bulletin

On December 16, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board (”Board”) issued its decision in Bexar County II, which restricts the right of property owners to deny off-duty contract workers access to the property for the purpose of engaging in activities protected under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“Act”). In line with the current Board’s efforts to undo Trump-era decisions and reinterpret the Act to dramatically expand employees’ Section 7 rights and weaken property owners’ rights to control their property, the Board overturned its own precedent on contract workers’ off-duty access and reinstated its standard first established in the 2011 decision in New York New York Hotel & Casino . The Board’s decision in Bexar County II makes clear that it prioritizes contract workers’ access to a third-party’s property for Section 7 activities over the property owner’s own interests in their property. [1]

On March 30, 2021, the Office of General Counsel of the National Labor Relation Board (“NLRB” or “Board”) released an Obama-era Advice Memorandum, originally prepared in 2016, opining that racially charged comments were protected concerted activity.  Just one day later, on March 31, 2021, Acting General Counsel Peter Sung Ohr affirmed in his latest Memorandum (“March 31^st Memorandum”) his plan to pursue a broadening of employees’ protections under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA” or “Act”) beyond concerted activities relating to ...

Last week, the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board”) issued a decision that “begins the process of restoring” a decades-old definition of “concerted activity” under Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA” or the “Act”) – a definition that, in the Board’s view, had become muddled and unduly expanded as recent decisions “blurred the distinction between protected group action and unprotected individual action.”

In a 3-1 decision, with Member McFerran dissenting, the Board in Alstate Maintenance, LLC upheld an administrative ...

In May, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis that employers may lawfully require employees to sign arbitration agreements that include a waiver of the right to participate in an employee class action lawsuit or arbitration. Below, we discuss the significance of this decision and highlight issues that employers may wish to consider in the wake of it.

Epic Systems—a Pivotal Win for Employers

The NLRB planted the seed for Epic Systems in 2012, when it first took the position that Section 7 of the National Labor relations Act (“NLRA”)—which affords employees ...

On February 16, 2017, tens of thousands of individuals across the country stayed home from work as part of the “Day Without Immigrants,” a social activism campaign organized in response to President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders concerning immigration and increased enforcement, deportation actions, and raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The “Day Without Immigrants” action was apparently not coordinated by any centralized organization, but was promoted on social media and by word-of-mouth just days before.

Now, the same groups that organized ...

Our colleagues Lauri F. Rasnick and Jonathan L. Shapiro, attorneys at Epstein Becker Green, have a post on the Financial Services Employment Law blog that will be of interest to many of our readers: “Policies Prohibiting 'Insubordination or Other Disrespectful Conduct' and 'Boisterous or Disruptive Activity in the Workplace' Struck Down by NLRB Majority.”

Following is an excerpt:

Once again seemingly appropriate work rules have been under attack by the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). In a recent decision (Component Bar Products, Inc. and James R. Stout, Case ...

Once again seemingly appropriate work rules have been under attack by the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”). In a recent decision (Component Bar Products, Inc. and James R. Stout, Case 14-CA-145064), two members of a three-member NLRB panel upheld an August 7, 2015 decision by an Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) finding that an employer violated the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA” or the “Act”) by maintaining overly broad handbook rules and terminating an employee who was engaged in “protected, concerted activity” when he called another ...

By: Paul Rosenberg

On December 9, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (“the Court”) refused to enforce a National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) decision that a hotel unlawfully suspended hospitality workers who engaged in a work stoppage.  Fortuna Enters. LP v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., No. 10-1272 (December 9, 2011).  In this case, UNITE HERE – the largest hospitality union in the country – was seeking to organize employees of the hotel. While the union organizing drive was ongoing, the hotel suspended an employee pending an investigation into whether ...